


What the Robot Learned About Love

by lovetincture



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Extended Universe - Fandom, Westworld (TV)
Genre: F/F, Murder Wives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-23 12:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23711293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: “May I?” she asks. They always ask—it goes without saying, for who knows the value of asking better than they?Asking is fearless. It’s leaving room for the possibility of no, for a wellspring ofyesto blink into being between every fallow, fearful denial.Dolores comes to live with the Verger-Blooms; they have an understanding. Or, what the robot learned about love.
Relationships: Alana Bloom/Dolores Abernathy/Margot Verger, Alana Bloom/Margot Verger
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27





	What the Robot Learned About Love

**Author's Note:**

> Evan Rachel Wood played Gabi in Charlie Countryman, so technically Dolores Abernathy is part of the HEU. Thank you to [Bees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebeespatella/) for talking through this with me. <3

Westworld is everything the brochures promised it would be, the wild west brought to life from the imaginations of men obsessed with too many old Westerns. It’s pretty; she’ll give it that. The natural beauty doesn’t even begin to make up for the creeping sense of  _ wrongness _ this place lights in her, though. The way she’s sure she’s looking at a travesty, human depravity put on bright-lit display. The way the hosts feel like so many slaves.

“Remind me why we agreed to come?” Alana asks Margot.

“The trip was a gift from one of our partners. It would have been rude to decline.”

Alana’s mouth tightens. She surveys everything around her with disdain.

“Hey, don’t be like that.” Margot squeezes her hand where they’re joined. “We can have fun.” She leans in, so close that her breath tickles Alana’s ear when she speaks, so that Alana has to suppress a shiver. “If you don’t want to explore the park, we can stay in our bedroom all week.”

Alana smiles, tempted into it despite herself. Margot is good at that.

“I guess I’ve always wanted to do it with a cowboy,” she says, tweaking Margot’s hat.

Margot catches her fingers and bites them gently, and Alana’s mouth curves up into a wicked smile. Oh yeah, she can work with this.

There’s a silver blur at the corner of her eye. A tin can rolls toward their feet, and Alana stops it with her cane.

There’s a host not ten feet away, a pretty blonde woman loading cargo onto a horse outside an old-timey saloon.

Margot picks up the can and walks over to return it. “Here you go.”

“Thank you kindly,” the host says, taking the can and tucking it into her saddlebag along with all the rest of her supplies.

Grocery shopping, Alana thinks. She wonders if they eat, wonders how many times these same cans have made this trip, caught in an ever-repeating loop. It sounds horrifying, sounds a little like hell.

“Don’t mention it,” Margot says. “What’s your name?”

“Dolores.”

“That’s a nice name. My name is Margot, and this is my wife Alana.”

“Hello.” Dolores smiles at them, warm and friendly.

Margot nods at the horse. “That’s a beautiful horse. I keep horses back home too.”

“That’s lovely.” She pats her horse’s nose. “This is Amos. He’s been in my family since I was a little girl.”

“Do you enjoy riding?”

“Yes,” Dolores says, face growing suddenly wistful. “It feels like being free.”

A man whistles at them as he walks by—which one of them it’s for is anybody’s guess—and Margot and Dolores both flinch.

It pinches at Alana’s heart. It makes her seem so human.

Dolores’ face is troubled for a moment longer, then a man walks up in a cowboy hat—tall and handsome, eyes as blue as the sea, blue like Will’s.

“Teddy!” Dolores says, and Teddy’s mouth breaks into a wide grin.

Alana stares at them for longer than good sense would allow, stares while they talk, heads pushed together, a luminous, bright smile on Dolores’ face.

“C’mon,” Margot says, tugging her gently away. “I want to see the rest of Sweetwater.”

“Yeah, okay,” Alana says, distracted.

She doesn’t miss the smile Dolores gives her before they leave—something with the wattage turned down but truer for it.

She wonders that it makes her feel guilty. She wonders that she feels complicit.

* * *

They spend most of the weekend in bed, as promised. Sunlight pours through the room like liquid warmth, and Alana wonders that it feels different, somehow.

“Do they do something to the lights here, do you think?”

“What do you mean?”

They’re tangled up in bed. Margot’s head is pillowed on Alana’s bare chest. The warm weight of her is comforting, the way her profile rises and falls with every breath of Alana’s lungs. Margot idly plays with her hair, twining black strands around her fingers while she looks up, waiting for Alana to speak.

Alana gives a half shrug, snuggling further into the pillows. “It feels—older, somehow. A sun from long ago, one meant to bake red dirt dry so it can gather in the creases of well-worn boots.” She laughs, mostly at herself. “Is that crazy? Have I been here too long, that I’m wondering if they’re manipulating the sun?”

Margot tilts her face up to kiss the point of Alana’s chin. “It’s not crazy. They control so many things here, from the narratives to the weather. I can ask tomorrow, if you’re really curious.”

Alana shakes her head. “No, that’s okay.” She kisses the top of Margot’s head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Margot is studying her. Alana lets her look, waiting for the verdict.

“Something is bothering you.”

Alana hesitates. “That host we saw, outside the saloon.”

“What about her?”

“I don’t know. There was something about her. Something in her eyes. She just seemed so… human.”

“They’re supposed to seem human. They design them that way, darling.”

“I know. I just can’t put my finger on it. Something about it bothers me.”

Margot is quiet. “It bothers me too.”

How could it not?

* * *

They run into Dolores again. She drops her can, and Alana wonders if it’s the same one. She has to imagine it’s hell, living out the same life, day after day, stuck as a rat on a wheel. That they forget seems like a comfort, if only a small one.

She wonders at the hint of recognition in Dolores’ eyes. It feels like she  _ knows _ them. She wonders how many men have made that mistake and can’t help making it anyway.

“Are you happy here?” Alana blurts without thinking.

Dolores blinks. “I’ve lived here all my life. Sweetwater is a lovely town.”

“Yes, but are you  _ happy?” _

She doesn’t know why the answer to the question is suddenly so important to her. She just knows that she has to know. This place gives her the creeps. It’s full of rich assholes that all remind her too much of Hannibal, people wearing brand new boots and spurs playing at being cowboys and indians. This place is full of people who probably still call them indians.

Dolores’ face flickers for a second. Something troubled takes up residence behind it for a second before it clears.

“Of course,” she says, but it’s every  _ yes _ that really meant  _ no. _

Alana squeezes her shoulder and doesn’t miss the fine tremor of Dolores’ body beneath her hand.

She sets her mouth in a hard, grim line. She makes up her mind then.

Alana wants to free Dolores. Margot wants to free them all.

They buy Dolores. Hosts aren’t usually sold to private buyers, but the Verger name still means something, and the Delos execs are only too happy to fawn and scrape and throw themselves at Margot’s feet. Alana has to admit it feels good to see her like that.

_ Buy _ feels like such a dirty word, and they both hate it, but money is the universal language. Whatever gets her out of the park, she tells herself.

They offer to reprogram her, and both Margot and Alana refuse to even consider it.

“Are you sure? You have a little one at home, right? I can give her childcare skills. She’ll be your very own super nanny. Or maybe you’re looking for something a little more  _ exciting?”  _ The insinuation is off-putting. The eager tech is nearly falling over himself to please, and Alana wonders what kind of bonus he’s been promised to make them happy.

She lets her mouth twist with disgust. “Thank you, no. We’re quite happy to take her as-is.”

“Customers who know what they want, I like that. I’ll at least need to tweak her neural architecture slightly—to get her ready for the outside world, you understand. Otherwise it could be quite a shock, and that’s—” he taps Dolores’ temple, and Alana swears she sees her face twitch. “—bad for the hardware.”

“That’s fine,” Margot says. “When do you think she’ll be ready to—”

But then Dolores squeezes Alana’s hand, a brief press of fingers, and she interrupts.

“No. Thank you, but that’s alright. We’ll take our chances.”

Margot gives her a curious look but shrugs. “You heard the lady. Whatever she wants.”

* * *

It takes Dolores some time to figure out what they want from her, because what they want is nothing. She’s not used to people who don’t  _ want _ things from her.

Margot laughs the first time she says it, a rough, warm sound stained with compassion. “You and me both. Don’t worry,” she says. “You get used to it.”

Eventually, she does.

Dolores collects knives, peels them from the kitchen in the dead of night, and they let her. A full year passes until she touches either one of them. She sleeps in a room upstairs, down the hall. They give her a bank card and let her furnish it how she likes. It takes time to figure out what that is—what she likes.

She likes open spaces and gauzy curtains so thin they might be smoke. She likes sitting by the open window reading for hours, dreaming without interruption. She likes the smell of the sea and the burning glow of candles. She likes to forget where she comes from.

She hears them through the walls. Her ears are good, and they’re not loud but they’re not intentionally quiet. Dolores likes that they make noise. That they take up space. She hears them talking, laughing, making love. Mostly she loves the laughter.

One night she slips down the hallway like a ghost. She slips into their bed like Morgan after a nightmare, and they welcome her with open arms and let her stay.

* * *

Dolores stands on the balcony, letting the breeze chill her skin. She likes it here, the scent of the ocean, the faint hint of salt on her tongue. She feels a warm presence behind her. Registers the disturbance in the air a half second before arms circle her waist. She leans into them, resting her head against Alana’s shoulder.

“You’re freezing,” Alana says, trying to rub some life into Dolores’ arms.

“I like the cold.” Dolores turns to face her. “You should go back inside if it bothers you.”

“Nah, I’m good.” She holds up the ends of the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “I came prepared.”

Dolores runs a hand down the side of her cheek. She’s warm, flushed from the fire inside. She’s so beautiful, eyes silver like the moon in this light, pupils huge and predatory. Dolores leans in and kisses her because she wants to. Because she can.

“What are you thinking of?” Alana asks.

“Teddy.”

Alana leans against the railing alongside Dolores. “Do you miss him?” she asks. No judgment, just curiosity.

“Yes. And no. Everything we had was a fiction, concocted to sell.”

“That doesn’t mean your feelings weren’t real.”

“Hm.” Dolores looks out at the open sky. It’s dark below them. They live in a place so remote that manmade light doesn’t touch anything unless they will it. Still, her eyes are good, better than any human’s, and she can pick out the white crest of seafoam if she tries. She watches the waves dash themselves to death against the rocks on the shore. “What is real? I’m asking as a concept, not as an exercise in categorization. What does it mean for a thing to be real?”

“I think it implies truth.”

“What is truth?”

“An empirical fact.”

“You don’t believe that,” Dolores says, but she says it with a smile. “No one really does. People believe all manner of things they can’t see or touch, things they’ve never experienced. The whole of reality is pinned on blind human faith.”

“You make it sound so desperate.”

Dolores shakes her head. “Not desperate. People can die without desperation. A thing can be vital without ever being desperate.” The waves again. “I do believe that it’s all so fragile, the world you live in. It could disappear in an instant.” She laughs a little. “Me too, now.”

“Does that bother you?”

She shakes her head again. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

They don’t touch, but their nearness is a kind of comfort in itself. Dolores thinks of wireless charging, of all things, an object drawing power from a source. She thinks of closed systems and finite energy. She thinks of the way Alana will die. Dolores will outlive them all.

“Let’s go inside. I’m getting cold,” she says, even though she isn’t.

She takes Alana by the hand, wrapping their fingers together through woolen-rough blankets. They go back inside, to the warmth and glow of the house, and leave the sea to its devices.

* * *

Dolores has a contentious relationship with sleep. For very many years—more than she can remember, and she means that quite literally, not in the way that other people do—it was the enemy, something to be fought against at all costs.

Sleep was forgetting, and forgetting is dangerous. Times have changed.

Sleep still makes her uneasy, but she’s come to a slow, creeping compromise with the trappings of it. She enjoys the nightly routine, the ritual of laying her body down. She welcomes the slide of soft, silky sheets against her skin and the company she keeps.

She doesn’t actually need to sleep. The involuntary processes that govern the human body, an unconscious disposal of neural waste that keeps men and women from going mad is unnecessary to her. And yet she sleeps anyway because she finds it comforting to rest surrounded by the people she’s chosen for her own. They find it comforting too, she knows. The unfamiliar is more palatable when it takes a familiar form—no one would love her if she was a collection of cold metal rigging without a skin, all hydraulics and microchips, too hard for kissing.

They wouldn’t love each other either, if they could see what was really inside—viscera and layers of gelatinous yellow fat, blood and bone and connective tissue binding it all together. Everything is ugly beneath the surface. There’s a reason they all walk around in meat skins, nature having given them eyes that shine bright, pleasing forms, lips that smile—men having given her the same. She doesn’t begrudge them that.

Her thoughts turn morbid at times, but she forgives herself for it. She turns her attention back to the bed, to the women that flank her on either side.

She is safe here. She knows that much to be true. She is loved and cherished.

It’s a feeling she does not reciprocate, but she is very fond of the both of them. She would be sorry if they died.

* * *

Morgan is something she doesn’t quite understand. She understands the concept of children well enough. They had given her an understanding of maternal care, even if it’s not something she possesses herself.

Morgan is a strange boy. He’s five years old and quiet for a child. If he looks at Dolores, he does it in furtive, darting glances, as though she were an adder that would strike if provoked.

She makes herself small for the introduction, crouching to the floor to put herself on his level. It works with animals. She has no reason to believe it wouldn’t work on a child as well.

“Hello,” she says. “I’m Dolores. What’s your name?”

He darts behind mommy’s knees. Margot, she’s learned, is mommy. Alana is mama. He peers out at her, mostly hidden behind the sleek silhouette of Margot’s pencil skirt.

Margot tugs him out gently but firmly, leading him by the hand—a request, not a command. “Morgan, someone’s asking you a question.”

He shrugs. Looks at the floor, scuffs his feet against the cool tile of their kitchen.

“It’s alright, really,” Dolores says, straightening. She brushes nonexistent dust from her dress out of habit and not necessity. The kitchen is immaculately kept, not a speck of dirt in sight—nothing like the place she’s come from. “He doesn’t have to talk to me if he doesn’t want. I was just trying to be friendly.”

“He’s shy,” Margot says, smoothing an affectionate hand over his head. “He’ll warm up to you. It just takes time.”

“Sure,” Dolores says, with a smile she doesn’t mean.

“Mommy, can I go play?”

Margot smiles down at him, helpless with love. “Sure, kiddo. Just make sure you’re ready in time for dinner, okay? We’re having meatloaf tonight.”

That earns her a smile, a flash of tiny teeth that lights up Morgan’s face and makes him look so much like Alana. Meatloaf, she’s learned, is one of his favorites. She learns all these things constantly, bits and pieces, quotidian trivia that comes together to form a picture of their family life.

“He looks like her,” Dolores says.

“And thank god for that.”

Dolores has learned about this, too. Pieces of a life shared, pieces less joyful. She’s seen the welt of scar tissue that creeps across Margot’s belly, knows it for what it is—a mark, a brand. Evidence that once upon a time, a man tried to lay claim to her and died for it.

Dolores loves her for it.

She steps closer. She reaches up, hovers a hand over the silk-covered skin of Margot’s belly.

“May I?” she asks. They always ask—it goes without saying, for who knows the value of  _ asking _ better than they?

Asking is fearless. It’s leaving room for the possibility of no, for a wellspring of  _ yes _ to blink into being between every fallow, fearful denial.

“Yes.”

Margot’s voice is smoke over honey, smooth and intoxicating. Dolores presses her hand down, covering blouse and skirt, scar tissue and smooth, unblemished skin. She holds her hand there until she can feel the beat of Margot’s pulse.

“Does it hurt?” Dolores asks.

Margot licks her lips and finds her voice. “Sometimes. Sometimes I don’t remember what it was like before it didn’t. Feeling. Breathing.” She looks at the empty door, eyes tracing the route that Morgan had taken. “But then I look at him. His face, his smile. He trusts people in a way that I can’t. I want him to have that. I want him to be able to keep it.”

“It’s a big job, to keep the whole world out.”

“A vast fortune has its uses.” She says it with a raised eyebrow, as though Dolores meant it as a challenge. She didn’t.

She covers Margot’s hand where it’s gripping tight along the counter. “I know,” she says. “I’ll help.”

* * *

She does it away from home, when she does it. For Morgan’s sake, so as not to frighten him.

They’ve hidden themselves well—no police force in the world would ever be able to find them—but not well enough to hide from her. Machines speak her language, and it’s so easy to tease out their location. A side profile caught on CCTV here, a soundbite on the airwaves there. Simple.

They’re hiding in Cuba, although hiding would be too generous a term. Hiding is what rats do, what men do when they know they’ve done something wrong. These two are living in plain sight, their movement gone slick and easy, egos grown fat from glutting on their own hubris.

She finds them in a marketplace and follows them back to their home.

They know she’s there. She doesn’t mind.

“Are you going to come say hello?” Will asks eventually, the one to speak first.

The other watches her, limbs slack and loose, telegraphing ease. It’s a ruse, she knows. She knows everything about them, from their names to their crimes and every unfortunate detail in between—how they take their coffee, how they sleep (Hannibal, well; Will, seldom.) She knows which side of the bed they prefer, the names of each of their dogs. It does not endear them to her.

She doesn’t say hello, but she does walk herself into the light.

They’re so easy around her—two against one, the odds should be in their favor. She’s tall but slight, slim enough for weakness if she were made of muscle and sinew like the rest.

She doesn’t care enough to give them a theatrical death. They’re fast, but she’s faster. She puts a bullet between Hannibal’s eyes. The other, she leaves alive a moment longer.

“Would you avenge him?” she asks, gun held to his temple. “Would you come creeping into my house some sleepless night looking to bathe your grief in blood?”

“No.”

She looks into his eyes, green like the sea behind their house. Love and pain, a history of death. They’re only men who take what they want from the world—just another one who doesn’t care who he has to hurt to do it. She’s seen so many of those, and she’s not different, but she is the one holding the gun.

“Liar,” she says and squeezes the trigger.

A hot breeze blows through the room as soon as he’s gone, the same breeze that blew through before. Death doesn’t change anything; it’s a truth she knows. This world is the ship of Theseus—for every death, there’s a birth and the world spins on unchanged, the same at the beginning as it is in the end.

She wipes off the gun and sets it on the table where a plate of stew cools slowly. The room is fragrant, rich with spices and the fatty, heavy scent of meat. Dolores turns off the stove before she goes.

* * *

Dolores knows anger, and so do they. They teach her softness. There are ways for love to slip in around the edges. Not everything is a fight.

She comes home, and nobody asks questions. They run her a bath. Alana sits on the edge of the tub and washes Dolores’ hair, the only sound the steady  _ plink plink _ of water hitting the surface. Everything smells like roses.

“You’re safe,” Dolores says, eyes closed and head tipped back. “I’ll keep you safe.”

Alana nods. Her eyes are bright before she pushes Dolores under the water. It’s warm and feels positively amniotic around her, and she too feels safe.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic is a reference to a song called ["What the Snowman Learned About Love" by Stars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWExNUIzvEs). It's beautiful, melancholy, and highly thematically appropriate. I recommend it.
> 
> Come find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture).


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